Balancing the budget.

[modeller]

Balancing the budget, foreign aid , and the benefit rackets are in the news every day but they are nothing new.
I came across this quote the other day which I thought I would pass on.

// "The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance." Cicero - 55 BC //

[Gromit]

Don't believe everything you read on the Internet. That quote has been severely embellished to fit the present situation. The real quote is

//   "The arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and assistance to foreign hands should be curtailed, lest Rome fall." //

[modeller]

Gromit I can understand you wouldn't like the Internet version , as you call it , it doesn't fit in in with your philosophy but I found it in an old Latin book of quotations . Like all quotations there are various interpretatioins . I found this also with quotations from Dante and Voltaire.
Your version is also in dispute so you can't say // the real quote is // .

[Ankou]

your quote was written by taylor caldwell in 1965 in a book called pillar of iron.

[VHG]

Talking of nothing new.

Watched a program about the history of London the other day and they covered the era when Gin first came to the UK. This was much stronger than todays Gin, it was the "crack cocaine" of its day and many people turned to crime and prostituion to pay for it.

There was a story of one woman who had 4 children and one was in care. She used to look after the child during the day. One day she killed the child and sold its clothes to pay for some gin.

The "Sun" would have a field day if this happened today.

This and other crimes made the authorities bring in a tax on Gin and regulate where it could be sold reducing the problem.

[Gromit]

Type Your Answer Here...may prefer to believe something that was made up in recent times because someone sent you an email, but it has no historic basis, it was fiction in 1965.

// actually originated in A Pillar of Iron (1965), Taylor Caldwell's fictionalized account of the life of the senator. (In fact, Collins noted that it was on page 483 of the edition he had in hand.)

Collins held that the alleged quotation "is totally without documentation," and that "the great bulk of [Caldwell's] quotations are false." He further observed that "[a] historical novelist has a perfect right to put invented conversations and anecdotes into a novel, but should not represent these inventions as authentic history." //

[Quizmonster]

Yes, Gromit, but you can't expect right-wingers to let the facts get in the way of what they think is a good story, can you?

[Ankou]

i like the way it was translated into latin though, fair do's.